Automobile doors have typically been manufactured to have a daylight opening in the upper portion of the door. The daylight opening allows the occupants inside the vehicle to see outside of the vehicle. A drop-glass has been used to cover the daylight opening and move up and down within the lower portion of the door allowing the daylight opening to be opened and closed.
Most vehicles have unique designs with differing sized doors and differing sized daylight opening within the doors. To match the paint of the door with the other exterior body components, the doors are often painted at the same time as the body. The drop-glass and surrounding componentry used to secure and operate the drop-glass are also installed at the final assembly location of the vehicle body, usually after the painting process. As a result, there are multiple components with multiple part numbers driving additional complexity into the final assembly of the vehicle, and thus additional opportunity for errors to be made.
Methods of pre-assembling upper-door assemblies to be mated with lower-door assemblies have been attempted to reduce the additional complexity at the final assembly plant. These pre-assemblies have no modularity of the components, and in essence only transfer the additional complexity of the multiple components outside of the final assembly plant to another location. U.S. published application US 2007/0262607 A1 to Saito discloses an example of such a method of assembling door parts.
The above problem(s) and other problems are addressed by this disclosure as summarized below.